Strange Company by Nick Cole (best ebook reader for ubuntu txt) 📕

“Grenade out!” Kid shouted like a good soldier. I swore and gave an Ultra surging right at us everything the minigun could do. Some kind of shield shimmered to life as that cat went down on one knee from multiple hypersonic impacts.

I whooped.

I’d hit one. Damaged him at least. Hey, it wasn’t a kill. But it was something for our side.

The Kid’s grenade detonated off to one side and blasted straight into that one. The Ultra rocked, absorbing the detonation with most of his armor. He stumbled. But he didn’t go down.

I stopped firing in stunned disbelief.

Not. Down. From. A. Grenade.

This is like fighting a fight you can’t ever win. Which would make it not a fight. But rather a received beatdown. I think too much. I’ve been told that before.

I swore and spooled up the minigun.

The guy stumbled some more, regained his composure and began to advance, waving with one arm in the standard infantry leader Follow Me.

“Eat this!” I roared and held on to the jumping, blurring minigun exceeding the safety parameters as all six barrels went forbidden popsicle. Turning into bright glowing sticks of molten heat. Smoke obscured my vision, but I was sure I was landing hits.

Then I was out of ammo.

And the guy was down on his back, riddled by hundreds of smoking holes. Somehow, we’d collapsed some kind of personal defense shield and cracked his armor integrity.

More of his kind swarmed in response. The Monarch hit one Ultra in the bucket with the fifty at twenty meters and blew that guy’s head off, even as the rest of his armor got racked by fire and the shield shimmered and distributed damage as best it could.

You could kill ’em. But the ROI was expensive.

“Belt change!” shouted the beautiful Monarch above me. The vehicle was getting dinged by incoming fire, but she was working like it was just another training exercise. Flip feed tray. Clear feed tray. Drag a new belt out of a can. Attach belt. Open fire once more.

I crawled on my belly forward and fought from behind the ceramic tire of the Mule with my Bastard. Armored run-flat ceramic tires make good cover. I knew that from past experience.

I applied good marksmanship where I could and killed none of them. One of the other Mule teams from Reaper, Jacks’s team I think, deployed a grenade launcher and began to ruin their left flank.

One of the Ultras dropped to one knee, cranked a long canister from off his back and onto his shoulder, and fired a recoilless rifle round.

I heard Jacks yell, “Run!” and everyone did in the seconds before the guy pulled the trigger. A moment later that Mule exploded but I was pretty sure someone got killed.

I slithered backward, got to my knees, and shoved a new magazine in.

“Full auto it is,” I told no one and popped up and dumped on the nearest Ultra. I didn’t stick around to see what I’d done to him as I was back down and working a new magazine in. That was when Stinkeye hunch-ran up and slammed into the Mule’s rear, near my position, gasping heavily and reeking liquor and weed.

“Looks real bad, Little King.”

“Grenade!” shouted the Kid, who then amazingly grabbed the Monarch off the gun and pulled her down behind the Mule for cover like he was trying to impress my new crush.

Good for him.

Dark thoughts of every NCO told me the Kid was gonna dive on it and be a real hero. A dead hero. But when you’re young, being any kind of hero is enough to make you do something stupid and try to save your friends.

One time, this guy we had back on another gig dove on a grenade that landed on our rooftop sniper overwatch. Buzz saw it come over the top and roll toward the center of the building’s roof. It was a hot desert world but the guys were fighting like hell to use a lot of AP. Which was good for Buzz. We were all wearing as much armor as we could, and as little clothing as possible because that place was one giant furnace. Some guy in Ghost even wore a short dress and when everyone made fun of him, he told them it was a native kilt from his world. But we thought he was just making that part up. Anyway, Buzz dives on the grenade like a real hero, except it was an EMP device. It shut down all our electronics until we could boot them again, and we had to fight iron sights for about twenty minutes, but we got them back up.

Buzz had jumped on the device thinking it was a grenade. Sacrificing himself for us. His brothers. His reward. We laughed at him and started calling him Buzz because after that he had a real bad ringing in his skull that he said he could feel in his stomach. It never stopped until he got it on Blue.

We were grateful in our own way. Yeah, we laughed because it was really too much to think about. How close we’d come. What he’d intended. Sometimes you just have to laugh at the serious stuff because if you don’t, you’re afraid you’ll lose some kind of edge.

And that’s the only way to survive as a merc. Always having an edge. Like I said, I want nothing to do with a fair fight. That’s the best way to lose.

The explosive the Kid had alerted us to went off and rocked our Mule, detonating on the driver’s side. I felt blood on my bicep. I’d gotten a hot scratch. It had also slashed my Grim Reaper Astronaut tattoo right in half. Time would tell if that looked cool, or just ruined it beyond recognition. If I got killed like it was looking like we were all about to, then who cared.

Right?

I heard the soft purr of the eel girl and regretted I’d never hear her again. She’d asked me once… “Can you have